


The Well of Cathedral

by blasted0glass



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Documentation, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:18:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasted0glass/pseuds/blasted0glass
Summary: An excerpt from The History Channel's popular show Extreme Magic.





	The Well of Cathedral

From the History Channel series Extreme Magic. Episode 12: “Magical Domains”

</Scene change: Extreme Magic Headquarters>

**Narrator:** “One should be so fortunate a magical researcher as to avoid the Fey Planar Gateway. After the break, we visit the most dangerous locale in the world. It’s a place where a world-ending threat is turned back daily--and automagically. And the threat _may have something to say._ ”

</Commercial Break>

**Narrator:** “Welcome back to Extreme Magic. From the physics-bending House of Jacques to the deadly Fey Planar Gateway, we’ve toured the world of Magical Domains. Now we visit the most dangerous site on Earth. Hidden deep in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States, there is a place in which the greatest threat to humanity is contained by an impenetrable barrier. The famous Well of Cathedral.”

</Scene change: Lake Needwood in Maryland>

**Marcus Smith** (Former Well Watcher) **: “** The category three Boltzmen were my favorite. You see them for just a few moments, just long enough to get a sense of their body plan and their movement, but they are common enough that you still get to see a few every day.”

**Interviewer:** “What about the higher categories?”

**Marcus Smith:** “Oh, well, they were usually good too of course. It’s always a treat to see one with enough time to act. They’re just so rare that you don’t get to talk about them much, and really a few extra seconds doesn’t make up for the rarity.”

**Interviewer:** “How long were you a well watcher?”

**Marcus Smith:** “I was one of the first. I spent over ten years at the Well, until 1999. Then… the category six convinced me I had had enough.”

</Scene change: Well of Cathedral Public Receiving Center>

**Narrator:** “The story of the well starts in 1974 with the husband-and-wife duo, Nathan and Mary Grove. The Groves were magical researchers, famous for disentangling barrier incantations. They had then set their sights on golem magic.”

**Interviewer:** “What was Nathan Grove working on?”

**Dr. Turnhip** (Magical Researcher at the Well of Cathedral) **:** “He sought to comprehend the golem spells. This was before all golem spells had been Excluded, of course. There are a few basic types that had been known for centuries; the faithful rock, the statuesque guard, the pacing sentry, etc. But then, in 1971, a new golem spell was discovered. That was the golem that wanders aimlessly.”

**Interviewer:** “That doesn’t sound like a very useful discovery.”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “No, but it started the field. The golem that wanders aimlessly didn’t really do anything--but it had arms and hands. There was the hint of more potential. In fact, the implications were extreme. How many golem spells might there be? Could you find a golem to do tasks other than walking, or even better, what if there were a general-purpose golem spell? Did the incantations control what the golem would do, in addition to how it appeared? It wasn’t long before many magical researchers focused on the subject.”

**Interviewer:** “What happened then?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “There was some excitement as more golem spells were discovered, especially when they found the golem that pushes against nearby objects. But progress was slow. The hope had been to generalize the golem incantations. Unfortunately, there appeared to be no discernable pattern to the vocabulary of the golem spells. Five more golem spells were discovered, bringing the total to twelve, and yet no theory of golems was forthcoming. For many years no new discoveries were made, until Nathan had already created the Well of Cathedral.”

**Interviewer:** “What did Nathan do differently?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “We can’t know exactly, can we? He died before he could explain it.”

**Narrator:** “Nathan Grove and his wife gave their lives to form the binding seal that contains the Well of Cathedral, in 1985. Six hundred monstrosities formed and escaped before the barrier was complete, but these weren’t immediately traced to the Well itself. The Well remained undisturbed for a few months after its creation. After it was recovered, the United States quickly arranged for golem magic to be Excluded. The specifics of the situation are tightly-kept United States secrets. No golem spells have been cast since that time.”

</Scene change: Lake Needwood>

**Marcus Smith:** “Everyone was disappointed when golems quit working, but most people understood that it was important. Or at least they did when the existence of the Well was made public. Excluding things is expensive, but the whole world was at stake.”

</Scene change: Public Receiving Center>

**Dr. Turnhip:** “You have to understand that, whatever the results, Nathan Grove was motivated by the greatest good. We are very lucky that he discovered the spell that led to the Well. If another researcher had made the critical discovery then humanity would be much worse off.”

**Interviewer: “** Why is that?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Unlike most, Nathan Grove chose to clean up his mess after his spell failed.”

**Interviewer:** “It was a single spell?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “You know what I mean. The combination of spells, at least one of which was certainly new, that made the Well possible.”

**Interviewer:** “What exactly is going on inside the Well?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Golems form at an incredible rate. Except, they aren’t really golems as we think of them. The are unstable--perhaps possibilities that aren’t quite realized. It is as though all but the last syllable of each golem incantation is being cast. I’m not permitted to say anything more, of course.

**Narrator, aside:** “Dr. Turnhip is a primary researcher at the Well of Cathedral. Much of his work is classified.”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Most of the incantations are actually nonsense--not real golem spells. We call the the artificial beings that form in the well Boltzmen.”

**Interviewer:** “So Boltzmen are incomplete golems?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Again, not exactly. The comparison to incantations is only a metaphor--Boltzmen are fundamentally different from golems. There are many, many more than twelve different kinds of Boltzmen--infinitely many kinds, in fact!--and the Well is probably iterating through them all. But every so often a Boltzman forms that actually corresponds to a stable golem. We say that Boltzman is ‘close to an actual golem in artificial being phase space’. In that case, the Boltzman lasts long enough to get destroyed by the barrier that Nathan constructed.”

**Interviewer:** “So it was a clever way to search for golem spells?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Indeed. You can infer that a golem spell exists for any type of relatively-stable Boltzman that appears. The golem won’t be exactly like the Boltzman, but it will be quite similar. Using the Well, we have been able to infer that there are almost certainly infinitely many golem spells as well.”

**Interviewer:** “All Excluded.”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Correct. Necessarily so--you only have to watch the Well for a few days to know that some undiscovered golem spells are worth Excluding. Furthermore, the Well itself is extremely dangerous.”

**Interviewer:** “The problem is that the Well makes Boltzmen too quickly?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “That’s right, and so Nathan had to construct the barrier. Most Boltzmen that the Well makes are instantaneous and disintegrate on their own. Of the rest, even the ones that correspond to golems very closely indeed--the vast majority are vaporized by the barrier in less than a second. The barrier reduces the lifetime of Boltzmen by hundreds of times.”

**Interviewer:** “Why? Wouldn’t Nathan want to study them first?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “He probably intended to, at first. Keep in mind that the barrier was made after the Well itself, as far as we can tell. When it became apparent that the Well was producing Boltzmen faster than he could dispel them, he put a stop to it.”

**Interviewer: “** The barrier incantation cost Nathan Grove his life?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “And that of his wife. They didn’t have time to prepare, so they fueled the spell with the most immediately available substrate--their lives.

**Interviewer:** It is certain that they thought it was important to limit the Boltzmen. 

**Dr. Turnhip:** Indeed. I’ll add that no better researcher could have made the discovery. The Groves had been instrumental in disentangling barrier incantations fifteen years prior. It’s fortunate that they had figured out barrier incantations before they made the Well!”

</Scene change: Lake Needwood>

**Marcus Smith:** “I’d often find myself imagining what it must have been like for Nathan Grove when he finished his spell. It’s a tragic scene. His moment of discovery has just arrived. Many Boltzmen are pouring out of the Well, which would have been tiny back then, and he is amazed. His amazement turns to horror as the well starts to grow. He can’t keep up with the Boltzman pouring forth, and many of them flee the scene. Nathan desperately calls in his wife--he has only minutes to decide what to do, and by then the Well is big enough to be producing some scary things. And then… they nobly cast the barrier, and they save the Earth just before the Well grows large enough to get out of control.” 

</Scene change: Public Receiving Center>

**Dr. Turnhip:** “The barrier at the Well destroys any Boltzmen that persist, with stronger Boltzmen persisting longer. Physically, larger Boltzmen tend to be stronger. Category four Boltzmen that endure for more than eight seconds are somewhat rare. Such a Boltzman would persist for days on this side of the barrier.”

**Interviewer:** “What are the categories of Boltzmen at the Well?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “The categories reflect the duration of the Boltzmen. Those that are immediately destroyed are category zero. Category one are visible to the naked eye, and persist for at least one second. The duration of the Boltzman doubles at each step, so at category five the Boltzmen persist for sixteen seconds. At its current size the Well could in theory hold a category seven, but that has never been observed.”

</Scene change: Lake Needwood>

**Marcus Smith:** “I witnessed the category six of 1999. It was a six point one, actually.”

**Interviewer:** “What was it like?”

**Marcus Smith:** “The thing had eight arms and orange skin. It was twelve feet tall--close to the biggest that could fit! The first thing I noticed, even before the arms, was the face. Most Boltzmen don’t even have faces, but the category six definitely had one.”

**Interviewer:** “What did it look like?”

**Marcus Smith:** “The area around the face was white. It had black eyes with red pupils. There wasn’t a nose, that I could see. But there was a large mouth with two rows of flat black teeth. It looked angry, like it was grimacing. From the moment it formed it was staring right at me. It pulled back its fists and began to beat on the barrier with all eight of its arms, one at a time. Each punch moved so slowly, like it was underwater. There was a deep boom every time a blow connected. The first sound made me fall out of my chair.”

**Interviewer:** “I can see why that would make you want to quit being a well watcher!”

**Marcus Smith:** “Well no, I’d seen Boltzmen that beat on the barrier before… though none quite as hard or as long as that one, and none in slow motion. But, I’d seen ‘em with faces, even ones that looked angry. None of those things were that unusual. The most concerning thing happened at the end, right before it disappeared.”

</Scene change: Public Receiving Center>

**Dr. Turnhip:** “The most concerning aspect of the Well is its growth. Its diameter increases by about a millimeter per year. The growth is tied to the duration of the Boltzmen produced within. You can imagine why Nathan tried so hard to make them short-lived.”

**Interviewer:** “Will it ever get big enough to hold a Boltzman that could break the barrier?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “No, that’s impossible. The Groves cast the barrier spell such that it uses the energy from defeated Boltzmen to fuel itself. The growth is the dangerous factor. The larger the area, the faster the iteration through Boltzmen--so the barrier gets stronger, but it also expands. The barrier is very well designed, but the rate of growth is exponential. One day the entire world will be encompassed by the Well.”

**Interviewer:** “When will that occur?”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Fortunately, best estimates project that it will take thousands of years--at minimum!--for the Well to even double in size. We have a lot of time to figure out how to disable the Well. All thanks to Nathan Grove.”

**Narrator:** “However.”

</Scene change: Lake Needwood>

**Marcus Smith:** “If the barrier were to fail, I think everyone on Earth would be dead in a matter of months. But the scariest thing about the category 6 wasn’t it’s behavior or its face, or even its violence. It was what it said, when it gave up on trying to break the barrier.”

</Scene change: Public Receiving Center>

**Interviewer:** “There is some disagreement about the nature of Boltzmen.”

**Dr. Turnhip:** “I know what you are talking about. I assure you: Boltzmen cannot speak.”

</Scene change: Lake Needwood>

**Marcus Smith:** “Right before it fell apart, it’s expression changed. It looked sad! I was taken aback. Then it talked. It said: ‘Please, you have to let me out.’ The researchers told me I imagined it, but I know what I heard. Boltzmen aren’t supposed to talk, they aren’t supposed to be conscious. But I heard it! And that was my last day as a well watcher.”

**Interviewer:** “Do you ever think of going back?”

**Marcus Smith:** “No! I don’t want to see it again. I know it’s unlikely that a similar Boltzman will appear any time soon… but it’s scary, y’know? All the stable Boltzmen match golems. So if it wasn’t for the Well of Cathedral, and the Exclusion, a golem like that might actually have been discovered. I shudder to think of what it would have done if there had been no barrier between me and it.”

</Scene change: Public Receiving Center>

**Dr. Turnhip:** “Marcus was a well watcher before I joined the facility. I think his experience of the speaking category six was a hallucination. There is video footage of the event, and the category six’s mouth didn’t move. The audio recording does not feature a voice, and only extremely loud sounds penetrate the barrier. Since those days we’ve improved the well watchers’ rotation schedule. We’ve taken steps to reduce psychological strain, and there have been no further reports of Boltzmen that can speak. It is very psychologically difficult to study the Well of Cathedral. As you might imagine.”

</Scene change: Extreme Magic Headquarters>

**Narrator:** “The Well of Cathedral persists to this day. It is studied and guarded in the Appalachian mountains of the United States, where researchers continue to record the Boltzmen and search for methods of dispelling the incantation that summons them. Thank you for joining us on our journey to the Well of Cathedral and other Magical Domains, in this episode of Extreme Magic.” 


End file.
